I was in the middle of a deep work session this morning when I spilt some water on my phone screen and somehow this song came on. And once it was on, I found I was physically unable to keep doing deep work. My brain just wanted to go places. Once I realized what was happening, I doubled down and replayed the song. I tried to resist the siren song and still do deep work. But my brain was doing cartwheels and somersaults and there was no hope.
A lot of us have playlists and mixes that we put on when we want to do deep work. We listen to them to tune our brain and our mental state to a frequency that is good for doing deep work.
To this day I have no idea how that song got onto my Spotify and started playing all by itself. But it made me think: what are the other anti-deep work songs? What are the songs that ruin your concentration. The songs that run on the resonant frequency of your mind and will collapse your concentration like soldiers marching in step on a bridge.
Resonance: a small repetitive force applied at just the right frequency, called the natural frequency, can cause large, even destructive vibrations. To either a bridge, or your concentration.
My brain listening to No Broke Boys
These anti-deep work songs won’t be loud chaotic or annoying songs (for you). That’s what the natural frequency metaphor is getting at. It’s the songs that have a catchy hook – a small repetitive force – which is then applied at just the right frequency to cause large and ultimately destructive vibrations. They are songs that tap into your natural frequency.
After further research I discovered some more anti-deep work songs for me – I physically cannot do deep work to these:
You could make a fun game show out of this which would be pretty easy to do at home. You have two teams, and one person from each team takes turns completing a mentally demanding task – something like a round of Boggle, or Bananagrams. The other team gets to choose a song that will play during that task. And obviously the goal is to find the song the player physically can’t concentrate to. The Siren Song they can’t resist. So the goal of the game is less about being good at word puzzles, and more about really knowing your friends and what songs will get their natural frequency resonating. And then watching their brains go cartwheeling off into the sunset.